Miller Lite recently relaunched their tried and true “Miller Time” campaign with a series of new spots. One of those spots features a very catchy song, How You Like Me Now, by The Heavy. It’s the classic case of a great song becoming discovered by being paired with a high-profile commercial with a heavy media spend supporting it. I had yet to hear of the song or the band before hearing it during a commercial, and after hearing it in the ad I thought about the brand every time I heard the song.

The problem for me (and Miller Lite) is that I first heard this song in the 2009 Super Bowl spot for the Kia Sorrento, not the 2012 spot for Miller Lite.

Why do brands feel the need to latch on to songs that have already been used in very prominent ads? Think about the reach the Kia Sorrento spot had. Don’t you think it would be smart for Miller Lite to select a song that people don’t already associate with another brand? And even if you didn’t associate the song with Kia, you probably had already heard that song by now, right? I think it would have been a much better play for Miller Lite to go with a track that was cool and felt right to listen to before a night out on the town, but had not yet been discovered. If they did that, people would hear the song and associate it with Miller Lite, and they would look at the Miller Lite brand and think, “Damn, these guys are purveyors of awesome music.”

Often times, music gets overlooked during the production of broadcast spots, and that’s not a good thing. When you treat the music selection for commercials as an afterthought, you increase the chance of your commercial becoming an afterthought.